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Dear Friends Greetings from Bethlehem. This is our second message to you in the course of a few days. In this letter, we would like to update you on the situation and thank you for your solidarity, which you expressed through your telephone calls, faxes and email messages, as well as your prayers and protests to the different authorities concerned. We want you to know that your actions and protests have indeed helped expedite the Israeli Army’s withdrawal from the Lutheran Church premises and from area A in the town of Beit Jala Thursday morning. The threat of another reoccupation attempt is still there, since the Israeli tanks and troops are looming on the outskirts of Bethlehem and Beit Jala. This morning, the students of the Dar al-Kalima Model School resumed classed after the school was closed for almost a week. Although happy to be back, the children are still living the trauma of the past few days. Many of them have frightening stories to tell. Sarkis, the eleven-year-old sixth grader, has lived through an experience that no child has to live through. On the evening of last Wednesday, when the shooting restarted, a bullet entered the main door of Sarkis’s house terrifying him and his family. To calm the children down, his mother told him and his sisters not to be afraid and to pray for the safety of the family. Before he had time to kneel down to start praying, two successive missiles hit the home, leaving him and his sisters screaming and crying. The missiles hit the chimney and the main entrance and left no glass window or door intact. Thank God that Sarkis and his family were not hurt, yet the family is traumatized by the experience. Angelina, a thirteen-year-old student, who is at the top of her eighth grade, has another horrific story to tell. Her home, which is in the area that was reoccupied, was taken over by the Israeli army and was used by the soldiers as a shooting base. Angelina and the other members of her family, all 13 of them, were locked into one room in the house for two days and were not allowed to get food or even to go to the bathroom without the soldiers’ permission. Angelina and her family are physically fine, but the memory and trauma of being taken hostage in their own house will take a long time to get over. The stories of both Sarkis and Angelina are not unique. Please keep them and all the children of Palestine in your prayers. Our mission is made a little easier by your reception and dedication to peace and justice. Our last letter to you has created a chain of reaction that we firmly believe have mobilized the situation. The actions taken on your part came in many forms including the following: 1. We received many responses by email from different part of the world that expressed concern for the people living through this new reoccupation. These emails came from countries including Argentina, Australia, Botswana, Canada, Egypt, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Lebanon, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Norway, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Uganda, UK, USA, as well as many other places. From Northern Ireland, a moving message came from a friend, who wrote us saying, Dear Friends I have just read your letter and it touched my heart very deeply. I have just recently returned from Kosovo and Bosnia and I am left wondering why we are so afraid of peace. Why do so many of our human race need the security of the "enemy" to define who we are. The enemy is as much within as without. From the USA, a new friend to Center wrote saying, Please pass the message, when replying to your friends and loved ones, my eyes fill with tears and my lips tremble as I wonder what this would be like if I were in the midst of this horrific crisis. What if that were MY child or MY grandchild that was being denied food, my family unable to sleep as they hover near each other in total confusion and disbelief, fear and panic of what may come next. It shakes me to my very soul to read "gunfire and tanks" in the same sentence as "Bethlehem". My only connection to Bethlehem is in the Bible, the birthplace of my Lord and Savior. A friend from Uganda sent us a poem that he composed upon reading our letter. Here is some of what he had to say,
We
need peace, cries the child
My
ancestor Israel
Do you
still hold me like you did before, Yes Lord!
I pray
that Love becomes Israel Another friend from Israel wrote us saying, “We are thinking of you and supporting activities against the occupation and war.” A friend from India told us, “Words are not enough to express what I feel for all the suffering faced in the Holy Land right now. There is not a day that goes without my thoughts being directed in your direction.” 2. A large number of news agencies reported the take over of the Lutheran Church compound in Beit Jala, including the boarding section, and have conducted interviews with people who were directly affected by this aggression. Many of you have contacted the major newspapers and broadcasting networks in your respective countries as well as their correspondents in the Middle East to ask for accurate and fair coverage. See, for example the articles Israeli troops retake Beit Jala By Phil Reeves, 29 August 2001 in http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=91104; After Invading Town, Israel Digs In Officials Say Troops Will Stay Until Shooting Stops By Lee Hockstader in http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10245-2001Aug28.html; http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=/ForeignBureaus/archive/200108/For20010829c.html. 3. The last letter we have sent you was forwarded to the European Commission via a friend. Many friends have directly forwarded our letter also to the White House, to the Senate and the Congress in the USA, and asked for an immediate United States intervention in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to bring about a peaceful resolution to the conflict. 4. A number of Church leaders in countries such as the UK, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Switzerland, and the United States have contacted their Foreign Ministries as well as the Israeli Embassies in their countries demanding a cessation of the belligerent and destructive actions against the Bethlehem area. 5. Many people have organized prayers on our behalf and circulated petitions asking that the Israeli Army move its forces out of Beit Jala. 6. The letter that we have sent you has been immediately translated into German and French, thus spreading our message to a wider audience. 7. Through the Sunday sermons and by publishing some very critical articles in local newspapers, some of you have courageously been trying to increase the awareness of your congregation members and local community regarding the plight of the Palestinian people. We understand that your task is not easy and that, in your determination to stand for justice and human dignity, you are under a great pressure to stop what you are doing. One of you have written us of experiencing such pressure saying, “I was surprised with the backlash I got after publishing some very critical articles in the local paper. Several of my colleagues and some local churches publicly berated me for denying the word of God and blaspheming God’s divine plan by condemning Israel.” Yet, once people’s eyes are opened, there can be no turning back, as our friend comments on his resolve not to give and says, “Ever since, I have been trying to help people understand that genocide of the Palestinian people cannot be advocated after Jesus Christ.” Yet, our friend and many like him, who face such back lashing, do not have to be alone in disseminating eye-opening and critical information. The huge leap that humanity made in the field of media and communications in the past few years has made it possible to tell a story as it unfolds, and thus allowing people from around the world to take a collective action. Hence, working with and through the media is a priority for the Palestinian people in general and the Palestinian Christians in particular. The story of the suffering of the Palestinian people under occupation is one that needs to be told and told again so that no other people have to suffer the indignity and inhumanity of foreign occupation. The church has and can play an important role in this regard. The images transmitted by satellites to almost every home in the world of the young Palestinian children in the boarding section in Beit Jala, praying for peace with Bishop Munib Younan while shots were being fired over their heads, and the voice of Khader Mussalam, admonishing Israeli soldiers pointing their guns and tanks towards him telling them “You cannot shoot from the steeple. This is a CHURCH,” have shown the importance and true mission of the church at times of great danger. Finally, we would like to thank you for all the actions that you have taken on our behalf. These actions prove that when Christ’s community is called upon and is mobilized to speak for justice and truth it indeed can move mountains. The road is still long and difficult. Yet, in the midst of all of the conflict and hopelessness in the Middle East, God has opened a window through which we can speak the truth, witness for justice, and advocate for peace.
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